The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance (11 page)

I felt like I could lose everything, but I wasn't sure how to explain. I felt like I could lose
me.
What if I woke up and something had fixed me, made me whole again? Made me so I didn't even want to do crazy shit? Who would I be? I sure as hell wouldn't be me. But I didn't know how to explain all that to Zack.

So I said, “It's a total mistake that I even have to go there. That car accident had nothing to do with drinking. I hadn't even had that much. It was about wanting to drive fast. Just because … Well,
you
know why. You told me yourself. You said it makes you feel whole for just a minute. So I wanted to try it. This whole AA thing is a mistake. But I couldn't say all that in court. How could I?”

Zack was looking at me funny. Like I was talking in a foreign language or something. “Cynnie—”

“You don't think I'm an alcoholic, do you, Zack?” I thought if he said he did, I would just die.

“Nobody gets to decide that for somebody else. You are if you say you are. Let's say you're not. It was all a big mistake. You really have nothing to lose by working the steps. Right?”

Except that I wouldn't be me anymore. But I think I loved that crazy me so much because Zack was there to share it with
me. Now that he'd turned his back on it, I wasn't sure how much I even cared. Maybe this “me” thing wasn't even worth hanging on to.

“Now, my mother,” I said, “she could really use it.”

The minute the words came out of my mouth I regretted them. I forgot Zack actually cared what happened with my mom.

“How 'bout if you give it a try … for
me
?” he said after a minute.

The only reason he could possibly have given me that I couldn't ignore.

When I woke up the next morning I lay in bed for a while, feeling like I couldn't move. Well, maybe like a cross between couldn't and didn't want to. It was like that feeling I had when I knew they were going to take Bill away. Like you're a sailing ship scooting along on the water, but then all of a sudden there's no wind.

And I wasn't thinking much, either. It was like all the thoughts I could think were bad ones. But I do remember thinking that if I saw Pat at the meeting that evening, I'd ask her to be my sponsor. Partly because of the promise I'd made to Zack. Partly because when things like this happened, like not being able to move, I wanted to feel like there was somebody or something to help me with them.

Then I thought how nice it would be to have one of those mothers who came in and pulled you out of bed and helped you get dressed and handed you a nice packed lunch and made sure you got out the door on time.

But I didn't. Which made having a sponsor sound like an even better idea.

I was nearly half an hour late for school because I couldn't break the spell. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get any wind into my sails.

I asked Pat if she would drive me home, and she said yeah, she would, so I called my mom and told her not to bother.

“Thanks,” I said, while we walked out to her car, which turned out to be an old beater of an Oldsmobile. “This is much safer. To go home with you. My mom is so smashed by this time of night. It scares the hell out of me to drive with her. I swear I'm taking my life into my hands.”

I waited in the cold for her to unlock the passenger door and let me in. Then we sat there and she let the engine warm up for a while and ran the heater.

“Sounds like things are bad at home.”

I shrugged. “Just the same as they always are.”

“And they were always bad. Right?”

I shrugged again. “Hard to know how other people's lives are, you know?”

She looked at me in the dark, like she could look close and see all the things I didn't say. But then all she said was, “Seat belt.”

I put it on and we started for home.

After a few blocks I said, “You told me a couple of times you'd be my sponsor. You know. If I was ready for one.”

“Are you?”

“I guess. I don't know. I'm ready to work the program for real.”

“Good,” she said. About time, I thought I heard, even though she didn't say it.

I didn't tell her why I was ready to do it or who I was doing it for. I'm not stupid.

“So what do I do? I mean, if you're gonna be my sponsor.”

“I'll give you a book tonight and I want you to read the chapter on the first step.”

Ah. See? I knew this would be like school. Sooner or later. She pulled into my driveway. We sat there for a while with the motor running. I was glad the house was there, all in one piece. I always expected my mom to burn it down or blow it up while I was away. But I never really knew I was thinking that until I saw it in one piece again.

Pat said, “So, you got a mother, but she's usually drunk.”

“More like always.”

“Father?”

“He died a long time ago. I only just barely remember him.”

“Friends?”

“I had a couple. A while ago. But I chased one off, and the other, I don't know where he is anymore.” And the best friend I ever had ran out on me, but now I found him again, but he's not really acting much like my friend anymore. But she knew Zack, and like I said, I'm not stupid. “And I had a kid brother. He was my friend.”

“Did he die?”

“No, my grandparents came and took him away. Because my mom didn't look after him right.”

“What about
you
? Why'd they leave
you
?”

“That's what I wanted to know.” Then, after a minute, I said, “Everybody always does. Anyway.”

I could see her nodding a little in the dark. “Never really had a chance, did ya?”

That made me a little uneasy, so I took off my seat belt and got out. She had to lean over and close the door because it was sticky. She had to pull it hard from the inside. I couldn't swing it hard enough to make it catch.

I walked up the driveway in the dark. In the cold. Wishing she hadn't reminded me how much I'm on my own in the world.

“Cynnie.” I turned around, and she had her window down and her head stuck out, talking to me. “You forgot the book.”

Oh yeah. My homework. God forbid I should forget my homework. Like I don't get enough at school.

Just as I was taking the book out of her hands, she said, “Call me every day.”

“And say what?” “ ‘Hello’ would be a good start. After that we'll just wing it.”

When I got inside, my mom was nearly passed out on the sofa. I mean, her eyes were open, and her head was nodding around a little. But she sort of looked in my direction, and you could
tell she had no idea who or what she was looking at, so that qualifies as passed out as far as I'm concerned. It's close enough. She had an empty bottle of something on the coffee table in front of her, and a full ashtray, and a cigarette in her fingers that was all burned down into the filter. But at least it had gone out on its own, before she burned the house down. The smell was nasty.

I walked right up to her and stood over her, and she looked up at me, and you could see her trying to focus. “What if Pat hadn't driven me home? You were going to come get me like this? In this condition?”

“I waited all night,” she said. Or something like that. It was really pathetic how one word ran into the next. “I didn't get going until you called.”

I just shook my head at her. Nobody could get that drunk in ten or fifteen minutes. I'm sure she had plenty after I called. But to get where she was now, you'd need a good running head start. I took three of her cigarettes out of the pack on the table. Right in front of her. She never said a word. I'm not sure she even saw.

I sat outside on the patio in the dark and smoked all three in a row. I was looking up at my tree house, thinking how much it sucked to get stuck on the ground for all this time. I was trying not to think this other thing, but in my gut it was there, and I couldn't ignore it. I was jealous of my mom. Because she didn't have to do all this work. She didn't have to go to school, and then probation, and she didn't have to go without even one little drink to take the edge off, because nobody
was going to test her pee. She didn't have to have a sponsor telling her what to do. She didn't even have to try. And she didn't. She just did what was easiest.

I crushed out the cigarette butts on the patio and left them there for her to clean up some other time.

CHAPTER 9
Don't You Dare

That next Saturday morning, Pat met me at the IHOP for breakfast, which I guess was pretty nice of her, and then to even it out she insisted on talking about the steps.

“How're you doing on step one?” she asked. She put tons and tons of Tabasco sauce on her scrambled eggs. It made my mouth hurt just to look at her.

I'd been doing my best all week not to think about step one. In fact, I'd even managed not to read the stuff in the book about it. I heard them say the short version of the steps at the beginning of every meeting, but I swear they didn't even make any sense. “Okay, I guess.”

“Do you understand it?”

“Um …”

“Trouble with the first part? Or the second part?”

I just stared at her, trying to figure out how to fake my way out of this one. I didn't even remember it had two parts.

She set down her fork and looked at me funny. “You didn't even read it.”

“I forget it now.”

The waitress came by to refill Pat's coffee cup. Pat put away a lot of coffee.

Usually I felt sorry for waitresses. It seems like they've got a rotten job. But right about then I wanted to trade with her. I could hang up pancake orders for the cooks, and she could hear all about step one.

“When this breakfast is over,” she said, “so is this sponsorship arrangement between you and me.”

First I wanted to stomp out, but I still had bacon on my plate. I love bacon. And also there was the part about Zack. I was doing this for Zack. “
Why?
What the hell did
I
do?” I felt stung. Seriously stung. Which was weird, because I hardly even liked Pat. But I couldn't get why all my relationships with everybody I ever met kept turning out the same. I thought a sponsor was supposed to help you. Be on your side. For a change.

“Nothing. That's just it. You haven't done anything. You haven't even said you're an alcoholic. You haven't admitted your life is unmanageable. And when I give you the simplest little thing to do, like call me on the phone, like read a step, you don't even bother. I can't recover
for
you, Cynnie. I can
hand you things, but you gotta take it from me. You gotta grab on.”

I looked out the window and watched a man buy a newspaper out of a coin-operated box. I wondered what Bill was doing this morning. I wondered if Zack would come to the noon meeting. I never answered Pat. She'd already made up her mind about me.

After a while I started to worry whether she meant what she said about when breakfast was over. She was shoveling those eggs in awful fast, like she couldn't wait to be done and get out of my life for good. Like everybody else.

So I said, “I'll do something. I'll tell you something. Aren't you supposed to tell your sponsor things?” She just looked at me and waited, so I kept going. “When I wake up in the morning these past few days, I can't move. I mean, I guess I could. But I can't make myself. Like my body is maybe three hundred pounds and that's more than I can lift. And it's kind of scary. Because it feels like it's bigger than me, and there's nothing I can do. And it goes on like that for about half an hour. Sometimes more. If I had a real mother, she'd come drag me out of bed and tell me I'm late for school. Which I always am. But I don't, so I have to fix this myself. And it feels like …” This was the part I didn't know how to say, because I didn't even really get it myself. “It's like it has something to do with the fact that there's a day out there. You know. Waiting for me. It's like there's a wall between me and the day and I can't figure out how to get through it. Or maybe I don't even want to.”

I stopped and waited, but Pat didn't say anything. Her look
hadn't softened up much, either. She was almost done with her food.

I said, “Isn't that the sort of thing you're supposed to tell your sponsor?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I have no idea. That's why I asked
you.
”

“Sounds like you're having a bout of depression. Or even panic attacks.”

I shook my head. Way off base. I was disappointed. “No. I don't feel depressed. Or scared.”

“That you know of,” she said.

“What does
that
mean?”

“I don't think you feel much of anything anymore.”

“How can you say that? I feel things.”

“Maybe. Maybe some things. The really big ones. Most people, by the time they get to this program, they're so out of touch with their emotions, they don't even
know
what they feel. Takes the emotional equivalent of an atom bomb going off under their chair. Like if they're scared of something—like a social situation—they'll say it bores them. And they believe it. Later things sort of unfreeze and then they look back and see where they were all along.”

She gave a little signal to the waitress and the woman caught it right away and brought a little paper receipt that I guess was the check.

I said, “So, are you still my sponsor?”

She hit me with a look I really hated. Like she was studying something fascinating written on the inside of the back of
my head. “Cynnie,” she said, “do you even think you have a problem?”

I couldn't answer, because I couldn't give her the answer she wanted. And I couldn't lie with her looking right through me like that.

“I don't think I can help you,” she said, and got up to go.

I sat there with my face burning, which I guess meant it was turning red. Even my ears were burning. After a second I got up and ran after her.

She was halfway across the parking lot, almost to her car, when I yelled out her name. “Pat!”

She stopped and turned around. But she didn't come any closer. Just waited to see what I had. What did I have?

All of a sudden I was pissed. I mean, really, really pissed. I felt
that,
all right. Whatever else I could or couldn't feel, I sure felt furious right then. My hands were all balled up in fists down at my sides, and I could feel my fingernails cutting into my palms. And I had to work to keep from crying, because I always cry when I get that frustrated and mad. And I had to yell at the top of my lungs, because she was halfway across the parking lot, and if I didn't say it fast, I was scared she'd be in her car and gone.